Legacy of Herschel Space Observatory

To celebrate the legacy of ESA's Herschel Space Observatory, which had significant NASA contributions, the European Space Agency (ESA) has designated this week as Herschel Week, highlighting some of the mission's accomplishments.

Herschel is the largest observatory ever launched that explored the universe in infrared wavelengths, a spectrum of light that is invisible to the naked eye. Data from its nearly four years of observations, from 2009 to 2013, have helped scientists explore many topics of high interest, including the following:

1. How do stars form? This question speaks to the core of our existence, as all the atoms that form the planets of our solar system -- and life on Earth itself -- largely originated from previous generations of stars. Herschel has provided an unprecedented glimpse into portions of our galaxy where stars form. Scientists have made big strides in understanding the processes that lead to the formation of stars in our galaxy.

2. Herschel has tracked the presence of water in the Milky Way. The observatory found water in star-forming molecular clouds, detected it for the first time in the seeds of future stars and planets, and identified the delivery of water from interplanetary debris to planets in our solar system.

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. While the observatory stopped making science observations in April 2013, after running out of liquid coolant as expected, scientists continue to analyze its data. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of IPAC, supports the U.S. astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.